Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 November 1875 — “Tact in Teaching.” [ARTICLE]

“Tact in Teaching.”

Sunday-school teaching must be conducted with tact. Teaching wfthout tact is a tax. In a sculptor’s studio there are some rough-hewn blocks, others nearer completion, others with delicate tracery visible. The marble is the same. It is the skill, the tact of the sculptor that enables him to bring out the finished work. Finishing Sunday-scholars is different from carving marbles. There is a difference in the work. True tact is the ready fact of appreciating and doing what is required by the circumstances. Mind acts for itself. The impression you make on it to-day may be obliterated to-morrow. In your class are several types of mind. One boy comes from a religious home where his heart has had opportunity to grow. Another is from the home of want and drunkenness. His heart is hard, and he looks on the world as an enemy. The father of another is a scoffer, and his mother a religious woman. Another is a waif with no home at all. Perhaps these are in the same class. This is all different from sculpturing marble. Different treatment is required for each. The teacher who has no tact will fail. So in the teaching of the lesson. Presenting the lesson the same way at all timeswill produce failure. A judicious change of methods is of advantage. Sometimes reading in concert; sometimeselliptically; sometimes reciting from memory; in many ways the teacher can exercise tact in selecting the proper course to pursue. Tlig good tactician thinks, as he is studying the lesson, how he shall present its truths to his class. In questioning, there is a great call for the exercise of tact. The' superficial scholar may ask a question like Topsy asKing if the state from which Adam fell was “ Old Kentuck.” To be able to lead back the wandering thought requires Urt on the part of the teacher. A rude boySn a class blacked his hand with soot from the Sunday-school stove and wiped iron the next boy’s hand. He communicated# it to the rest, and soon all the class had their hands blacked. The teacher turned it into an object-lesson on the blackness and contagion of sin. showing his tact. How shall we get at the heart of the child who is looking for the application, and fearing you will give it to him burning hot? Don’t rub against the grain. As in planing boards you drive vour plane with the grain, drive judiciousfy ana you can go overthe roughest surface, and find your way to the most unpromising heart. —S. S. Workman.